[16]. Drupada was of the Aswa race, being descended from Bajaswa (or Hyaswa) of the line of Ajamidha.
[17]. This marriage, so inconsistent with Hindu delicacy, is glossed over. Admitting the polyandry, but in ignorance of its being a national custom, puerile reasons are interpolated. In the early annals of the same race, predecessors of the Jaisalmer family, the younger son is made to succeed: also Scythic or Tatar. The manners of the Scythae described by Herodotus are found still to exist among their descendants: “a pair of slippers at the wife’s door” is a signal well understood by all Eimauk husbands (Elphinstone’s Caubul, vol. ii. p. 251).
[18]. Tarangini.
[19]. Paenama is a [Persian] word peculiarly expressive of subserviency to paramount authority, whether the engagement be in money or service: from pae, ‘the foot.’
[20]. Sacrifice of the horse to the sun, of which a full description is given hereafter.
[21]. Duryodhana, as the elder branch, retained his title as head of the Kurus; while the junior, Yudhishthira, on the separation of authority, adopted his father’s name, Pandu, as the patronymic of his new dynasty. The site of the great conflict (or Mahabharata) between these rival clans, is called Kurukshetra, or ‘Field of the Kurus.’
[22]. Herodotus describes the ruinous passion for play amongst the Scythic hordes, and which may have been carried west by Odin into Scandinavia and Germany. Tacitus tells us that the Germans, like the Pandus, staked even personal liberty, and were sold as slaves by the winner [Germania, 24].
[23]. On it the last Hindu monarch, Prithwiraja, lost his kingdom, his liberty, and life.
[24]. Rajatarangini. The period of writing was A.D. 1740.
[25]. Having ventured to surmise analogies between the Hercules of the east and west, I shall carry them a point further. Amidst the snows of Caucasus, Hindu legend abandons the Harikulas, under their leaders Yudhishthira and Baldeva: yet if Alexander established his altars in Panchala, amongst the sons of Puru and the Harikulas, what physical impossibility exists that a colony of them, under Yudhishthira and Baldeva, eight centuries anterior, should have penetrated to Greece? Comparatively far advanced in science and arms, the conquest would have been easy. When Alexander attacked the ‘free cities’ of Panchala, the Purus and Harikulas who opposed him evinced the recollections of their ancestor, in carrying the figure of Hercules as their standard. Comparison proves a common origin to Hindu and Grecian mythology; and Plato says the Greeks had theirs from Egypt and the East. May not this colony of the Harikulas be the Heraclidae, who penetrated into the Peloponnesus (according to Volney) 1078 years before Christ, sufficiently near our calculated period of the Great War? The Heraclidae claimed from Atreus: the Harikulas claim from Atri. Eurysthenes was the first king of the Heraclidae: Yudhishthira has sufficient affinity in name to the first Spartan king not to startle the etymologist, the d and r being always permutable in Sanskrit. The Greeks or Ionians are descended from Yavan, or Javan, the seventh from Japhet. The Harikulas are also Yavans claiming from Javan or Yavan, the thirteenth in descent from Yayati, the third son of the primeval patriarch. The ancient Heraclidae of Greece asserted they were as old as the sun, and older than the moon. May not this boast conceal the fact that the Heliadae (or Suryavansa) of Greece had settled there anterior to the colony of the Indu (Lunar) race of Harikula? In all that relates to the mythological history of the Indian demi-gods, Baldeva (Hercules), Krishna or Kanhaiya (Apollo), and Budha (Mercury), a powerful and almost perfect resemblance can be traced between those of Hindu legend, Greece, and Egypt. Baldeva (the god of strength) Harikula, is still worshipped as in the days of Alexander; his shrine at Baldeo in Vraj (the Surasenoi of the Greeks), his club a ploughshare, and a lion’s skin his covering. A Hindu intaglio of rare value represents Hercules exactly as described by Arrian, with a monogram consisting of two ancient characters now unknown, but which I have found wherever tradition assigns a spot to the Harikulas; especially in Saurashtra, where they were long concealed on their exile from Delhi. This we may at once decide to be the exact figure of Hercules which Arrian describes his descendants to have carried as their standard, when Porus opposed Alexander. The intaglio will appear in the Trans. R.A.S. [The speculations in this note have no authority.]